posted by Joel Southerland

When a special day, project, meeting or event looms on the horizon it can create great amounts of stress for the pastor. The planning, promoting, and organizing can add to the workload of an already frazzled minister (not sure if “frazzled” is a word but you know it when you’re in it).

One of the solutions I have found is to choose project managers for these types of events. When I have a special event or project, I use a lay volunteer to be the Project Manager and Coordinator. The PMC meets with me to get my vision of the project, and they begin the task of putting it all together. You may think this risky, but I’ve found that they often go far beyond my expectations.

Whey they have a question, it can usually be handled through a quick phone call, meeting, text or email. A week or two before the event - or “due date,” if it’s a project - we have our final meeting to go over everything in detail.

It works seamlessly. Our goal is to have a project manager for every event we do. And, we want to keep the PMC from year to year. That way, they can be thinking about their one event (instead of my 65) all year long.

Pastor, whatever your next big day is, look for a volunteer to be the PMC and follow this plan:

• Choose a volunteer that has the capabilities to handle the project. If you are unsure, take a gamble on someone about whom you feel relatively confident.

• Have an initial meeting with them to go over all of the details - date, budget, etc.

• In this initial meeting, paint a picture of what you would like the event to look like, what you would like to accomplish with the event, and explain why the event is important.
• Give them the first task to do and set a regular schedule of “check-backs” where the PMC will contact you and give you an update.

• Work with the PMC through the regular updates to continue to iron out the details.

• One or two weeks before the event hold a meeting to go over final details.

• During the event, if possible, give the PMC credit for all of their hard work.

• After the event, hold a meeting to go over what went right and what needs to be corrected before the next event (if it is reoccurring). Encourage the PMC to work on ideas to improve the event throughout the year.

If you’ll do all of that, you’ll get to keep your clean desk!

posted by Scott Newton Smith

“I handle the problems in my church from the pulpit,” the pastor said to me confidently. And he will get up there Sunday next thinking, “Boy, I’m really gonna tell ‘em today! This one will get ‘em.”

He’s planning yet again to “fix” his opposition with a hard sermon.

What a joke. If that’s you, stop kidding yourself.

If you are taking 90% of your sermon time to try to fix the 10% of your audience who are opposing you, that is bad ministry stewardship on display. It doesn’t work. Would you invest 90% of your money in an investment that loses 90% of the time? Of course not. Where instead would you invest?

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Download mp3 or press the play button above to stream audio.

In this episode of The Sermonators, we discuss 3 key ideas for maximizing a personal assistant to streamline your workload and gain time in your week. Unless you already have these three ideas fully implemented, you could gain as many as five hours or more in your week.

Hey, bi-vocs… we also discuss how to find and use a volunteer assistant this week if you don’t have one yet.

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posted by Scott Newton Smith

Up front disclaimer: We’re not endorsing nor bashing Driscoll here at The Sermonators. We’re not groupies for any particular preacher “celeb.” You won’t find us pushing a particular preacher, nor a group of them. That’s not what this site (or our show) is about. Our job is to find and develop good content for busy pastors.

So, Mark Driscoll. Love’im or hate’im, there is something to learn from Driscoll’s experience in regards to our primary topics of time management and preaching management in ministry. The following sound bite is worth a listen.

Here’s the background: At a recent Resurgence Conference, Mark Driscoll, preaching pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA indulged an interesting Q&A session about the more practical aspects of his ministry. I know that most of our audience here are not pastoring mega-churches as he is, nonetheless we get some good insights from his answers.

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Download mp3 or click the play button above to stream audio.

In this episode of The Sermonators, we discuss five tips to bulletproof your study time each week. Making sure that you block uninterrupted time to do your sermon preparation each week is crucial for effective preaching.

We promised the script for the phone message that Southerland (Joel) leaves on his cell phone as a “temporary absence” message while he is in his study. It reads like this:

“Hi this is [your name] and it is [date] and you have caught me in my study. I’m not able to take calls right now, so if it is an emergency you can call the church office at [your church phone number]. However, I will be returning phone calls later on, so if you would like, leave me a message and I will call you back later in the day. Or, you can email me at Pastor AT [whatever your church] DOT [com, net, org or we-hope-not-gov] & I will be checking those occasionally. Thanks for understanding and have a blessed day.”